Monday, April 12, 2010

I read this great post on Girlstartup.com the other day. In it the author, Simone, talks about how she tried a scrapbooking related online startup, but it failed, primarily because scrapbooking wasn't her passion. It's an excellent read and a very honest post.

I couldn't agree more, passion is hugely important. Though I don't think you necessarily have to be passionate about the product your startup is selling. Take Shoes of Prey. While I'm developing a passion for custom made women's shoes, they are to me what scrap booking was to Simone, I'm not super passionate about them. My passions are online marketing, customer service and business development. So one of my business partners is Jodie and boy is she passionate about custom made women's shoes, so she takes care of that side of the business. My other business partner, Mike, is passionate about web design and programming, so he takes care of that part of the business. I'm left with the online marketing, customer service and business development, all of which I love! So between the three of us, our passions cover off everything we need in our startup.

I don't think you necessarily have to be passionate about what your startup is doing, but you do need to be passionate about what you are doing in the startup.

1 comment:

Hmm interesting, the thing is you have someone in your company that is really passionate about your product and so you don't necessarily have to be passionate about the product itself.

This is the response I wrote to your reply on my blog:

Good point about delegating work to different people in your startup, so you can focus on your passion. I still don’t know if that would work well for me personally, especially as I can only afford to hire myself and a developer. I think the key here is, that someone in the startup needs to really “passionate” about the product, for it to work._____________

I certainly would love to hear from more people that own a business/startup and what they think. I think it would be a great discussion.